I have had several visits from potential clients whose identities were stolen in one way or another. In one case, the identity thief bought two houses in the victim’s name. The victim’s credit is now in ruins, and she is facing foreclosure on mortgages that were not hers to begin with. Undoing this kind of damage is never easier. And it is even harder when financial institutions will not cooperate.
Witness the case of Rachel Poor., whose debit card was apparently cloned by an identity thief. An identity thief stole her checking account, forging checks on her account. She acted fast, reporting the problem to Bank of America. But BoA refused to close her account because it had a negative balance, so the thief was able to continue withdrawing funds faster than Poor was able to try to deal with the fraud, racking up nearly $2,000 in purchases and $580 in overdraft charges.
It took BoA six weeks to refund Poor for the fraudulent charges. despite its BoA advertises its “Total Security Protection,” but among the caveats and quid pro quo: it doesn’t apply to checks.
- Zero Liability. If your card is lost or stolen, Bank of America reimburses you for any unauthorized card transactions up to the amount of the loss, when reported within 60 days from statement date.
- Guaranteed credit. Your account will be credited by the end of the next business day for unauthorized transactions if your card is lost or stolen.
I’m sure there are all kinds of caveats and quid pro quo surrounding those “guarantees,” but Maybe BoA should consider living up to its own hype.
[via Consumerist]
If you are in Minnesota, contact The Glover Law Firm, LLC, for a free case evaluation. In any other state, you can find a consumer rights lawyer using the National Association of Consumer Advocates lawyer database.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Where in the article did you read her debit card was cloned? Does the BOA Total Security Protection apply to checks? The article mentions the ID thief was writing checks against her account (see 2nd sentence in last section, “All the fraudulent charges involved forged checks”)
You read more closely than I. Fixed.
I find it interesting that BofA is the company you mention as they were incompetent and in my opinion, downright dishonest, when someone stole our identity and opened cards with BofA. When the collection calls started, it took us almost 2 months and several attempts to get BofA to even acknowledge receipt of the letter we sent contesting the two accounts as fraudulent. Once that was acknowledged, they responded back saying the account was indeed fraudulent (during this 30 days we continued to get daily collection calls which I’m told is against the law), except they only acknowledged one of the two cards in their response letter. We assumed all was well with the world until a year later their attorney called and threatened a judgment! At that point we hired legal counsel and they duked it out. I’m told they were in violation of federal statutes by contacting us at all after our letter was received. In the process they offered to charge off the debt which would have reflected negatively on our credit report. Thankfully we were credit savvy having both been in banking. It was a miserable awful experience and took us more than three years to finally rectify and get it cleared from our credit report. BofA did not want the info we had found out about the true villain to pursue criminal charges. At that time we could not press charges as we weren’t considered the “victims” of the crime! Yea, right! I will not willingly do business with BofA because of their incompetence in this matter. Because one of our credit cards was purchased by BofA, we have now made an exit plan to close that account.
I am going through a very similar situation with Bank of America right now. I have been dealing with this since December 2007, and I have yet to have my account corrected. I am about to loose everything because I have no options.
Bank of America has the most lax security I have come across. I had my checking account cleaned out in the beginning of 2005 and found out the week it had occurred. The fraud department supposedly put an alert on my account and per my instructions were not to allow any activity without my express permission. They would not close the account as they said until the investigation was complete, it had to be open for them to put the money back in the account to take care of negative balances. I could not get the money out fast enough once it was put back in my account; whoever had my information was monitoring my account and taking it out before I could. I was even at a branch trying to get my money one day when my acct balance dropped while I was at the desk. No one paid attention to the so-called fraud alerts on my accounts and I kept having thousands removed through pay by check and Visa 911 emergency wires to someone. When I had money taken from my acct to pay a phone bill in another state, I asked BOA to subpoena the address from the phone co (per the phone co’s procedure to release infor to police), BOA said it was too much work. Throughout a year and a half, I fought with BOA and they just didn’t care. As a matter of fact, when my balance was in the negative, they actually tapped into my son’s account from another state to make up the balance. As a result of this incompetence, my legit credit cards (one from them, included) had the interest rates jacked from 9% to 30%, causing my normal credit to be trashed. Every chance I get I warn people not to bank with BOA. You are not protected and they don’t care about giving your money away.
Georges Marciano Co-Founder of Guess, has just released a youtube video about the pursuit of justice underway. He talks about the over 200 accounts opened under his name without his knowledge, Bank of America’s negligence in allowing this, Marc Dreier who was recently arrested for defrauding, impersonation, identity theft of clients ….more on this blog post
http://o8justiceforall.wordpre.....ube-video/
or go to youtube video post by Georges Marciano
http://www.youtube.com/user/o8justiceforall
B of A has been pretty notorious about this. Unfortunately, as an ex Citi card employee, I can tell you that their methods are not any better.
A BofA employee stole my husband’s and my identity on February 20, 2009 in LA. Several accounts have been opened under our names even after we reported the first one, and both our profiles were flagged at the bank. A few days later, BofA was happy to give our money away to someone impersonating me in another state. Fortunately I found out right away about the first fraudulent account and was able to protect our credit. However, this has created so many problems and so much aggravation for us (calls form collection agencies, fraudulent overdraft fees by the bank, countless rude responses from their telemarketing department, etc.) that I am now ready to sue the bank. So far the bank has not taken any steps regarding all the information I have provided them. A few weeks ago the employee was still working there, and I guess he still is. I want him to be criminally charged and I want to sue the bank. Does anyone know of any similar cases regarding BofA that may help in my case. I do not want BofA not their employee to get away with any of this. Thank you.
Well, i am also a victim of Identity Theft. Some one was able to obtain my identity, most likely through the theft of my wallet. From it, they forced fake checks, 3. A year later, i received a letter from the collection agency. It claimed that my checks were bounced by BofA. I asked the collection agency to send me or fax to me, the coppies fo the bounced checks. They argued, and struggled with the concept that I might have been a victim of Idnetity theft. They only cared about he collection Policy. Well, by luck, i managed to order them to mail me the coppies. I received them about 6 months later, damn, even thought i called them every 3 weeks, and they continued to say, they are on their way. Well, i took the copies of the bounced checks to BofA. THey argued that it wasn’t their obligation to help me, or to claim that they where fake checks, and that my job was to deal with this problem directly with the collection agency, stupid.
In some fasion, i was able to contact other corners of BofA, and made sure that they accepted the bounced checks as fakes. Now, i am contacting BofA, and Writting an Identity Theft report to the Poice Department again, simply to get the collection of my back, they really bother, and i am glad they aren’t near enough to witness my anger. Good luck to the rest of you!!!